Southeastern Europe is entering renewed crisis—and Moscow is fomenting more chaos at a dangerous time

Friday brought good news for those who want Europe’s troubled Southeast to join Western security and political structures. Montenegro’s parliament officially approved the country’s invitation to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It wasn’t a slam-dunk—approval got 46 votes in the 81-member assembly, with opponents boycotting the vote—and joining NATO remains controversial in the tiny Balkan country, but this was unquestionably a setback for the Russians.

Vladimir Putin pushed hard to keep Montenegro out of the Atlantic Alliance, applying the full range of dirty tricks in the Kremlin’s Special War toolbox: espionage, propaganda, subversion, even plotting assassination and terrorism. It didn’t work in the end, indeed a ham-handed scheme by Russian spies to violently overthrow Montenegro’s government last fall probably helped the pro-NATO side in the end.

See more at: http://observer.com/2017/04/montenegro-nato-vladimir-putin-baltics/